Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 supplement/Blanchard, Edward Litt Laman
BLANCHARD, EDWARD LITT LAMAN (1820–1889), miscellaneous writer, the son of William Blanchard [q. v.], comedian, was born at No. 28 (originally 31) Great Queen Street, London, was educated at Brixton, Ealing, and Lichfield, accompanied his father to New York in 1831, and was in 1836 sub-editor of Pinnock's 'Guide to Knowledge.' In 1839 he wrote for amateurs his first pantomime, in which he played harlequin. Under the pseudonym of 'Francisco Frost,' and subsequently under his own name, he wrote countless dramas, farces, and burlesques. In 1841 he edited Chambers's 'London Journal,' and subsequently founded and edited 'The Astrologer and Oracle of Destiny' (1845, 29 Nos.), and also edited the 'New London Magazine' (1845, 2 Nos.) He is responsible for editions of Thomas Dugdale's 'England and Wales Delineated' (2 vols. 1854, 1860), and Willoughby's 'Shakespeare;' was author of 'Temple Bar' and 'Brave without a Destiny,' novels; wrote many illustrated guides to London and other places, including Bradshaw's 'Descriptive Railway Guides;' furnished entertainments for W. S. Woodin and Miss Emma Stanley; songs comic and sentimental, principally the former; and other miscellaneous works. His dramatic efforts included plays for the eastern or minor theatres, written often for 10s. an act. To west-end playgoers he is principally known as having for thirty-seven years supplied the Drury Lane pantomime. These works were not devoid of prettiness and fancy, in which respects they have not since been equalled. Alone or with various collaborators he also wrote pantomimes for other London and country theatres, amounting, it is said, to one hundred in all. His plays have never been collected, very few of them having been printed. Blanchard contributed to most of the comic rivals to 'Punch' and to various literary ventures, and was associated with many well-known men of letters, from Leigh Hunt to Edmund Yates; was theatrical critic of many papers, including the 'Sunday Times,' the 'Weekly Dispatch,' the 'Illustrated Times,' the 'London Figaro,' the 'Observer,' and ultimately the 'Daily Telegraph.' To successive numbers of the 'Era Almanack ' he contributed ' The Playgoer's Portfolio,' and he wrote frequently in the 'Era.' A mere list of his productions, theatrical and other, would occupy columns. He kept a diary, edited in 1891, after his death, by Messrs. Clement Scott and Cecil Howard, which is a memorial of arduous and incessant struggle and, until near the end, of miserable pay. It furnishes a delightful picture of one of the kindest, most genial, and lovable of Bohemians — a man with some of the charm of a Charles Lamb. After a long and distressing illness he died of creeping paralysis (4 Sept. 1889) at Albert Mansions, Victoria Street, and was buried on the 10th in the Kensington cemetery at Hanwell. Blanchard was twice married, his second wife, to whom a complimentary performance was given at Drury Lane, surviving him. In his 'Life' by Scott and Howard his third name is given as Leman; on his tombstone it is Laman.
[Personal knowledge; Yates's Recollections and Experiences, p. 210; Scott and Howard's Life, 1891 (with portrait); Era, 7 and 14 Sept. 1889; Men of the Time, 12th ed.; Athenæum, 7 Sept. 1889.]